This idea is admittedly half-baked at this point, but tell me what you think about what I have so far:
What if the mission options we got from contacts, etc gave us a choice of "Do mission A because it will get you a lot of experience" versus "Do mission B because it will get you a lot of IGC."
Maybe mission A gives NO IGC (like the mobs don't even drop it), or maybe just really LOW IGC returns as compared to everything else.
Similarly the IGC missions would give no XP for defeating mobs, none at the end, etc. or maybe just really pathetic rates of return in comparison.
If this were the case, I think we'd all do mostly XP missions until we got to the cap then mostly IGC missions after that.
Okay, but what if crafting items required you to do XP missions. And by that I mean, you queue up an item you want to craft (after acquiring the salvage and so forth to actually do it) then you have to "work" to get the item done, and your "work" progress is measured in XP gained (or XP that would have been gained, if at the level cap) while the item is enqueued. Then once you've done enough XP missions, your item is fully "cooked" and you get it.
This would cause people to do mostly XP missions when leveling up a toon (but probably not XP exclusively, as you'd wany IGC to slot stuff into your powers as you go along, like SO type stuff), and mostly IGC missions at the cap, but you'd still need to do the XP ones to craft stuff, and maybe that takes up almost half of your missions, or more. The rate of IGC generation would then be tied to how much time people are willing to devote to IGC missions.
And then maybe outdoor street sweeping gives both XP and IGC, but mediocre amounts of both.
And then you could let people use Stars (the real-money-backed currency) to temporarily increase their crafting rate or just "buy" a certain amount of crafting progress or something.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Well, one flaw in the logic is, How could anybody know, in advance, what the reward for doing a deed will be?
Granted, a contact Might say, "I'll give you x-reward for completing this task," but I don't see how that would, or could, affect the rewards in the mission itself.
Certainly, one could meta-game the mission, count up the number and type of NPCs encountered, and calculate the likely rewards... But, what if you don't trip every trigger and stealth or simply maneuver to completion? What's your reward, then? Or, perhaps you're a blood-crazed scrapper and deliberately go about milking all the ambushes for the maximum carnage and slaughter every single minion, rat and spider in the whole complex? Do you get a better reward?
Also, consider XP - Experience. This is a game-mechanic and, outside of the game-mechanical effects, it has no quantity or value. Anyone who offers you 'Valuable Experience' is not to be trusted - Demand cash.
Be Well!
Fireheart
What I'm envisioning would be that contacts would have basically two different kinds of missions they could give you, both of which would take about the same amount of time and effort to do, but the up-front dialog with the NPC would make it abundantly clear what the mission was for. Like the two types of mission would have different descriptors. XP missions would be called "Investigations" or something and IGC missions would be called "Contract Jobs" or something. The contact would have a menu of different missions you could do , some under the heading of "Ongoing Investigations" and others under the heading of "Currently Available Contracts". Which list you pick from tells you what you're getting right away, and the missions themselves would have different objectives, ostensibly, but probably boil down "defeat the badguys" in some way shape or form.
If your hero is going to the abandoned warehouse to look for the missing plans and the shady character who likely stole them, then we can assume you're going to run afoul of some badguys and fight them, which makes this an XP mission. If the NPC asks you to go on guard duty in some area, you're probably getting paid, hence an IGC mission, but you're still expecting a fight against badguys.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One of the motivations behind this idea was the thought that maybe if people had to actively pursue IGC-laiden content to the exclusion of other things in order to get any IGC (instead of having it drop all the time from every mob defeat) then the result might be less IGC generated overall and less IGC inflation as time marches on. Also, in this system, there is a natural feedback mechanism by which the market can correct itself. If IGC every gets scarce enough that a little goes a long way, then people will tend to do more IGC missions to cash in on that. If IGC is getting devalued because there's so much of it around, people will do those missions less, etc.
Of course, if not done right, that can backfire. For example, if the IGC prices of things on the market seem to be going up, this means that IGC is becoming less valuable, but a guy who wants to buy a widget now needs MORE IGC to buy that widget, which might lead that guy to do MORE IGC missions, not less of them. Then again, that's only true of the people who have virtually no IGC. Those who have a lot will likely go on a buying spree and buy up all the useful items they can, trusting them to retain/appreciate in market value as the value of the IGC goes down.
Anyway, I have no idea if this "IGC missions vs. XP missions" idea would have the intended effect.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One might take any mission and use the 'XP-Toggle' that's been talked about, to convert to a 'No-XP Mission' which only rewards IGC?
I can see this being more easily handled with client-side choices, rather than hard-coding the differences into the missions themselves.
Be Well!
Fireheart
In my opinion, turning XP off entirely is, or should usually be, a bad decision. What I mean, is, go ahead and have that toggle, it serves a purpose, but the only use for it I can see is when you want to avoid out-leveling your friend who plays far less than you do. When that happens, that's your friend holding you back, which though not unreasonable, is to some extent, a bad thing for you. As far as outleveling content and outleveling your gear, those things ought to be less of a problem than they were in CoX due to stuff like auto-exemplaring (what the Ouroboros flashback missions did) and making the gear system not level dependent, at least in the sense that ALL of your Augments and Refinements don't immediately expire when you hit a certain level to the point where they do nothing and have to be replaced all at once. You can make a gear system that doesn't work like that but still encourages people to update their gear over time.
I think the reason for hard-coding is that given the choice, people will always opt for more IGC in their missions, unless you force them to make the choice. People might turn off XP voluntarily. I doubt they'd ever turn off IGC like that. I see no reason why anyone would.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising